Gabon, home to the medicinal plant behind ibogaine, wants a fairer share of its global boom

Gabon is pressing for a bigger share of the global ibogaine market, built on Tabernanthe iboga, a root bark central to Bwiti spiritual traditions that is also the source of an alkaloid drawing serious interest as an addiction and PTSD treatment. Clinic treatments abroad run from roughly $7,350 to $30,000 per patient, while a Gabonese growers' cooperative, A2E, sold 41 kilograms of legally farmed bark to a Canadian company for about $50,000 total between 2023 and 2025.

Gabon is a party to the Nagoya Protocol, which requires fair benefit-sharing for genetic resources, though the U.S., where interest in ibogaine is rising fastest, is not. Texas has put $50 million toward ibogaine research and an April 2026 executive order pushed federal agencies to accelerate access, even though ibogaine remains Schedule I domestically, pushing the commercial treatment market offshore to places like Mexico and Malta.

Gabon tightened its 2019 export ban in September pending a new benefit-sharing plan, and a May decree would route proceeds from downstream treatments and even synthetic ibogaine into a national fund split between the state and communities. A2E's president says the contracts promised a share of that downstream value, but none of it has arrived yet, and the company involved does not dispute that the money is simply being held.

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